Friday, March 5, 2010

Tree Care Questioned

A 46-year-old man from Brooklyn was killed on Feb. 25, 2010, after being struck by a fallen tree limb in Central Park.

After a Brooklyn man was killed by a branch that fell in Central Park last week, a watchdog group said the city doesn’t do enough to maintain trees in parks, according to Our Town.

Elmaz Qyra, 46, was walking along Central Park’s Literary Walk Feb. 25, during one of the largest snowfalls on record, when he was struck and killed by a falling live tree branch, police said. He was pronounced dead by EMS at 3:25 p.m. Later that night, the Parks Department took a rare step in advising New Yorkers to avoid city parks.

Geoffrey Croft, president of New York City Park Advocates, a non-profit that tracks city park policy, said the warning was an “amazing indictment” of the state of the city’s park trees.

“I was floored when I heard about [the advisory],” he said. “I’ve never heard of anything like this before.”

Croft believes that a funding shortfall for tree maintenance could result in more accidents.